


The Genesis of Torchwood

by matrixrefugee



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-10-20 08:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17618846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Torchwood starts to organize itself.





	The Genesis of Torchwood

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[fic_promptly](https://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/) [Torchwood, author's choice, there was a Torchwood before Jack Harkness, believe it or not.](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/190922.html?thread=8227018#cmt8227018) Featuring Lady Isobel Macleish, Alice Guppy and Emily Holroyd. Warning for Victorian mores.

Torchwood House might belong now to the Crown, but Queen Victoria left the matter of organizing the newly chartered Torchwood Institute in the capable hands of Lady Isobel MacLeish. The woman possessed more competence than she thought she had: she only wanted for a chance to show that competence.

And so, armed with the charter that Her Majesty had drafted, Lady Isobel set to work searching among her friends and acquaintances for people with the necessary qualifications. She knew one Sir Francis Guppy, a former agent in Her Majesty's military intelligence, who had a daughter to whom he had imparted some of his secrets. She had wanted to follow in her father's footsteps, but her sex had kept her from pursuing such a course of action. She came with a recommendation of her own, one Emily Holroyd a friend of hers, one Alice Guppy, a medical student at a women's college, who had also desired to follow Miss Guppy into a military career, but who, despite her slightly mannish mode of dress, had met with the same hindrances. The two ladies had learned a good deal of proficiency with firearms and the use of modern technology, and so they brought the proper level of expertise to the fledgling Institute.

Reports of many strange phenomena had arisen in Cardiff, Wales, most notably the strange gas-like phantoms that had bedeviled a public reading of "A Christmas Carol", by Mister Charles Dickens himself, a situation resolved, so the locals claimed, by a man who called himself the Doctor, quite possibly the same as the Doctor who had crossed paths with Queen Victoria. And so the ladies of the Torchwood Institute felt it most imperative to begin their operations there. Torchwood House would serve as a secondary location, as a place where they could store their findings long term, but the work would commence in Cardiff.

"But this is such a back water place," Miss Guppy said, as they sat in their temporary lodgings in a half-decent house overlooking Cardiff's Bute Docks. "Would the Doctor truly come to such a place?"

"He is less likely to come to a more notable location, if he does not wish to incur the wrath of the Queen," Miss Holroyd said, cleaning the mechanism of her pistol before reassembling it, pressing a tea table draped in news papers into service. "And Her Majesty has ordered the construction of a base of operations in this very place, on my recommendations."

"In this place? Where shall it be? This is such a rough town, full of sailors and shipyard and dock workers," Miss Guppy said, rising to look out their windows, expecting to see some structure in the process of erection.

"It shall be *under* the docks which you despise so greatly," Miss Holroyd said, with a smirk.

"Under the docks?" Miss Guppy replied, turning away from the window. "But how shall it be built?"

"With pneumatic drills and a good deal of manpower," Miss Holroyd replied. "The better to hide the secret work that we undertake on Her Majesty's orders."

"It sounds like a dank, dreary place, but I trust Her Majesty to hire the best and most diligent builders to construct it," Miss Guppy said, coming to her companion's side and draping an arm about her shoulders. "As long as we can work there together and serve Her Majesty well."


End file.
